When you look around, there are signs of spring to be seen! Preseason professional baseball games are now underway. Each day a few more eagles show up in the Anchor River valley, just waiting for the river to break open and the commencement of the salmon runs. After midnight tonight, we switch to Daylight Savings Time which has always intrigued me. At the peak of the summer season, we get a couple of hours of twilight. Is there a great need for daylight savings time in Alaska?

Another sure sign that spring is slowly evolving, the gas prices are slowly increasing a few cents per week. Come first leaves, the prices will be at the level that the oil companies desire. I have really been surprised that the new administration has not decided that the oil companies need some stimulus funding.

Today, I took a sampling of gas prices in several locations. The dates that these prices were posted were either March 6th or March 7th. To analyze the data in an unbiased format, I priced Regular/Unleaded priced at the low end of the search data.

From the four locations that I chose for sampling:
I found the least expensive gas in Montrose, Colorado. On the low range gasoline prices were fixed between $1.81 ~ $1.96 per gallon.

The second location, Lincoln, Nebraska low range gasoline prices were fixed at $1.83 ~ $1.95 per gallon.

In Anchorage, Alaska gasoline was being priced at $2.36 per gallon for the same grade.

In Homer, Alaska you should be prepared to see an increase per gallon. Gallon prices in Homer ranged from a low of $2.77 to $2.88 per gallon.

As of this date, the average cost per gallon in Anchorage is $2.359 while the national average of the remainder of the United States is $1.937 per gallon. One year ago on the same date, the national average was set at $2.761 per gallon. On that same date, the average price in Anchorage, Alaska was $3.208 per gallon of gasoline. A slight disparity in average prices.

I have no intentions to ever changed from the fossil fuels that I utilize today. Priced per ounce, it is still cheaper than a bottle of Pepsi-Cola or even "glacier fed spring" water.

However, I was recently reading a news article that came across the AP on March 3rd. According to this article, the super tankers that move the oil around the world in an attempt to satisfy the unquenchable thirst for oil, are now parked off shore, fully load, anchors down, their crews killing time. It seems that the vast storage farms in the United States are filled to capacity. Iran and other oil producing countries in the middle east have pumped millions of barrels of their own crude oil into idle tankers, effectively taking the crude off the market to halt declining prices.

The sprawling storage facility for crude oil in Cushing, Oklahoma is nearly filled to capacity, the quantity is a closely held secret. The storage facility in Cushing, Oklahoma is the delivery point for the oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange. So the closer Cushing gets to full, the lower the prices of oil.

Storage facilities are not holding their full capacity to assist in increasing the oil prices for crude. The tankers are being used as temporary holding tanks until the price of crude increases to the desired profitability of the oil companies and traders. More than 30 tankers, each with the ability to move 2 million barrels of oil now serve as floating storage tanks. Tanker companies charge an average of $75,000 a day which is three times a much as last summer. The hoarding of crude oil has also had a negative impact on oil exploration and drilling. The number of oil and gas rigs operating in the United States has decreased 39% since August.

You can be the judge at what the gasoline prices will be this summer.